Hello Family and Friends!

I'm doing it again this year, I'm giving up my birthday for Charity: Water. Which means that instead of presents, I'm asking people to donate to Charity: Water. It's an organization that raises money to build wells and teaches communities how to run and fix them. This means that communities and villages that would normally not have clean drinking water are able to get clean water! No more walking miles for dirty, unsanitary water that only causes sickness and disease.

Our church is putting on a concert next week to help provide clean water to the people of Cambodia. More than one third of the country is without clean water and you can help to change that! Any money raised through my campaign will go to the Cambodia effort. For info on that event you can go to http://www.drinks4drinks.com/. I love getting presents, trust me, but when I stop and think about it, I don't need anything. God has blessed Matthew and me with so much and I want to give back. There are people who are in need and I can help. So I'm going to. Even if it's only 20 people, that's 20 people who will have a better life.

I'm turning 28 years old on September 1st and instead of asking for gifts, I'm asking for $28 (any amount would be great though!) from everyone I know. It's not going to me, though. All of it is going to build freshwater projects for people in developing countries.

Almost a billion people in the world are living without clean water -- but how much are they really living? Millions contract deadly diseases from contaminated water. 30,000 people will die this week alone. The lucky ones won't, but still have to walk hours each day to get dirty water for their families.

My birthday wish this year is not for more gifts I don't need; it's to give clean and safe drinking water to some of the billion people living without it. I want to make my birthday matter this year.

The best part: 100% of all donations go directly toward water projects. And about 18 months after this campaign ends, charity: water will show us where and how every dollar we raised ended up helping in the field. We'll see GPS coordinates, photos and more details about the communities we've impacted.

Please join me.